Meet the Alzheimer's Patient Who Helped Julianne Moore Win An Oscar

On her 50th birthday, Sandy Oltz sat on the film set of “Still Alice” and listened to actress Julianne Moore speak a line that Oltz, an early onset Alzheimer’s patient, had struggled to write.

“Please do not think I am suffering. I am not suffering,” Moore said as the character of Alice Howland. “I am struggling, struggling to be a part of things, to stay connected to who I once was.”

Playing a woman with early onset Alzheimer's disease, Moore was giving a speech to a fake meeting of the Alzheimer's Association. It's a position that Oltz has been in many times before.

Oltz, a self-described “type-A” person and former nurse, was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s disease at age 47, when she was raising two teenage sons and juggling a high-pressure job.

“There is some family history, but I never really thought that it would be me,” said Oltz of her early diagnosis. "We tried menopause, we tried brain tumor, we thought stroke, seizure. It took about a year to come to Alzheimer’s.”

Months before the “Still Alice” film shoot in New York, Oltz partnered with the cast and crew of the film through the Alzheimer’s Association. She gave tips from her own life about how to cope with Alzheimer's, such as using a highlight to mark text she's reading. The work seems to have paid off with Moore winning a Golden Globe and an Oscar for her role.

"[Moore] would just ask questions like, ‘What does it feel like to have Alzheimer's,'" said Oltz. "I would say, 'Well, it’s like all these words [are here] and you can’t find the right one.'"